By the time we woke the next day the AAI Team had left for the summit, Brian being among them. Ty and I had slept almost 13 hours. We crawled from our tent squinting like nocturnal animals drug out into the light of day. The weather would start out as crystalline and remarkable as the previous two days. It would also turn just as vengefully menacing by late afternoon.
Though our plan was to descend all the way to base camp on the opposite side, Plaza de Mulas, we moved about aimless and slow-witted. Kevin had warned us the night before "you gotta eat something and drink another liter of fluid before jumping in your sack or you'll wake up feeling the way you do now. You'll totally bonk," he cautioned. But it had been all each of us could manage to put down that first liter of hot Gatorade. Against his counsel, we had turned in immediately. Now we were living the consequences. I considered the notion of just resting for a day. But there would be no point in staying another night. To do so would most likely result in still further deterioration of our condition as the thin air levered hard against it.
At some point Chicago Steve emerged from one of the AAI tents. Having decided well ahead of time that he would not attempt the summit, he remained at High Camp. By now his vision was being affected by the altitude. "I'm seeing green," he told us. "That can't be good," I offered, "how long has that been going on?" He said it had started a day ago but didn't seem to be getting worse. Their lead Guide Aiden had determined Steve would be OK while the team summitted, then they would all descend the next day.
Ty and I packed up our tent. We then started experimenting with various means by which we could attach our loaded duffels to the tops of our packs. Unwilling to carry a load down then climb back up for the remaining provisions, we had become resolute with scheme of taking everything down at once. Each of us would shoulder the burden of a double load; the heaviest carry yet, in what was our weakest condition of the trip. I should stress that this was a choice born not of ambition or machismo, but of the complete lack of other acceptable choices.
I noticed two climbers coming down the hill as we gathered up the last of our things. As they neared I could see it was Aiden and Kevin, the two AAI Guides. Their team was not with them. I could tell something was wrong with Kevin as they settled into camp. "Hey, Dudes. What up," I queried. "I bonked," Kevin said in a defeated tone. "I started feeling really tired as we went higher and Aiden asked if we were all doing OK. I said Yes, but another 200 feet up the hill I just bonked. It took me right to the ground," he explained. "I've got the guys hydrating and holding their position right now. I'm going back up in a second and we will continue to the summit," Aiden said. Kevin and Steve would retreat immediately to base camp where their respective conditions could be expected to improve swiftly.
We were not the only climbers leaving High Camp that day. The IMG Team had departed two hours earlier. Also a father-and-son team from Britain was leaving. They were the only other self-guided team I had seen on the trip. Other Climbers had nick named them "The Bulldogs." Loud and boisterous, they often shouted comic retorts to one another in thick British accents. They were fond of wearing sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off, a fashion described as a "wife-beater shirt." And their plans for Aconcagua were just as brash. In short, they planned to paraglide from the summit. Accordingly, each packed a full parachute all the way to High Camp. But for reasons of weather, or reasons of not, they decided to abort their plan and head down the mountain without even attempting the summit. "Hey mate," the older of the two shouted to a climber ascending to High Camp, "step aside a minute." Then he hurled his undeployed parachute off the mountain. His son did the same. The two packs landed hard, cartwheeling down the steep face. One appeared to take instant damage as a streamer of colorful fabric was liberated.
Ty and I considered doing the same, but we valued our contents too greatly so we started down toward Plaza de Mulas beneath monstrous loads. No one trains for carrying heavy loads downhill. You would wipe out your knees before ever getting to the climb. It is just one of those things a Climber has to suffer through as best he can. So we did. I could feel blisters forming early on. Then there was the dampness of what had to be blood coming from the area of my big toenail. Many times our loads would haul us backward against the hillside, only to skid in graceless humiliation. I felt deep sinewy ligaments within my glutious tighten then ache in protest. Tiny camps grew larger, then passed. We made deals with ourselves to descend at least 800 vertical feet before resting again. As our first glimpse of Plaza de Mulas came into view, minuscule and taunting, the weather rolled over into a cold wind-driven pellet snow. We stumbled on for two more hours, finally arriving wet and exhausted some 5,000 feet below High Camp at the tent city of Plaza de Mulas.
We hobbled into the Grajale cook tent, snow-caked and spent. I pulled up a plastic milk crate to sit on while the Camp Boss dealt with a British Climber who needed a helicopter out for one of his team members. It was warm inside the tent and smelled of real food cooking in the pans. I peeled off a wet layer of clothing. The cooks and the camp boss looked me over critically. In this tiny space, their tiny space, myself and my gear were melting in an expansive and untidy manner. But they had seen this kind of thing before. They knew it would be a mistake to have anything to do with me. Somewhere inside me the survival instinct that had been active for the better part of two weeks relaxed. I felt my head bob as slumber tickled me.
Ty had caught up with Kevin and Steve outside. They were kind enough to save a campsite for us to set up in next to them. But by the time he joined me in the cook tent I had already made other arrangements. "...and do you need beds," the Camp Boss had asked lastly as we confirmed the services Ty and I would need. "Beds," I asked, certain he could not mean what he said. "Yes, beds," the Camp Boss confirmed. He led me to a large quonset hut tent with several bunks lining each side. A bare plastic mattress offered forgotten comforts and I immediately agreed to rent two bunks for $20 each ...even though snow was blowing in the tent corners and covering both. We would not have to sleep on the ground or set up our tent in the blowing snow. We would enjoy shelter tall enough to stand in. We might even make some new friends among the ethnically diverse bunk-mates who peered at me from the breathing hole in their mummy sacks.
We joined Kevin and Steve in their dining tent for dinner. I don't recall what was served, but it was hot and their was plenty of it. We ate and ate like lions at the first kill of the migration. Speculation was traded as to how things had gone for the AAI summit team. No one wanted to point out the troublesome weather they were no doubt caught in at the time. So instead we talked about the physical strength of each member, trying to sound confident about a scenario so factually incomplete that we may as well have been discussing alien abduction. It would be several days before we learned they had turned back short of the summit. But they had done so very early in the day, before the weather could punish them, before their energy was burned. The AAI team spent another restless night at 19,000 feet, then left again the following morning for the summit of Aconcagua.
"Dude, you look like hell," Kevin said to me with a smile. I realized I had dropped out of the discussion and taken to a distant stare. There was no cause to doubt him. My forehead had burned and blistered in the intense sun of the last few mornings. My lips were so swollen and cracked they felt like flaps of leather that met without joining. The area around my nostrils was peeling away. I laid a hand to my face and everywhere it touched there seemed to be ragged bits of flesh turned up, autumn leaves on a front lawn. My eyes were bloodshot from the ceaseless wind. Though we were still at 14,500 feet, an altitude equivalent to the summit of Mt Rainier, this was low enough to feel the thicker air, low enough to trigger physiological changes. At this altitude injuries could begin healing, but first they would make themselves known, springing forth from hypoxic dormancy. "You remember that rock you fell back against three days ago," my body would ask. "Well here's the bruise I promised you!"
I thought about my Sons as we settled into our bunks that night. I imagined them warm and comfortable in our home on Lake Samish and wondered what had been going on in their lives these last several weeks. The experiences of the climb had already awakened a vast appreciation for how much I have to lose and I missed them like never before.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Pictures from the climb
There is more story to tell about the rest of our trip down and I will be writing those entries soon. In the mean time you can check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/Kilgoretrout22
Take care.
Dave
Take care.
Dave
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Summit Day
1/24/10
The following is my account of what happened during our summit attempt of Aconcagua on January 24th, 2010. I have made a best effort to reassemble the events, persons, times, and places with the greatest accuracy. But the nature of recalling such things from persons who where oxygen deprived at the time of occurrence is fraught with errors of omission and fact. So there you have it. This is one man's version and nothing more.
The day before we left for the summit had started out clear and idealic, a fist full of salt in the wound opened up when our summit attempt had to be scrapped. But clouds began forming in the lowlands by early afternoon, slowly working their way up all sides of the mountain to converge just above High Camp and dump snow by mid day. Just before the first snow fell Ty looked out the tent window. "Hey, Super Climber. Check it out. Pea Soup." Sure enough, the visibility had been reduced to a few hundred feet. We looked at each other thinking the same thing. It was a good thing we didn't go up. This would be the forecasted snow storm, the one that would drop 3 inches, then clear out to leave perfect summit conditions. As a pellet snow began peppering our tent the report of heavy thunder confirmed how nasty things were above us. As Climbers are prone to doing, we chose to focus on the now excellent prospects for the next day's summit, offering no energy to the speculation of what circumstances we might then be in had we left for the summit that morning as planned.
The three inches of snow turned out to be more like five. There had also been a fair bit of wind. But by morning all was right. We celebrated the convenience of scooping snow right outside the tent door, not even having to leave the comfort of our shelter to harvest the raw material for water. We had decided to leave at 7:00 a.m. after comparing strategies with some of the other teams at High Camp. Since the first several hours would see us climbing the south side of the mountain we would be in the frigid shadow of Aconcagua. To leave earlier would mean still more time in sub-zero temperatures and increased exposure to frostbite. But in spite of our best efforts it took longer to get ready than we had expected. The thin air had a way of slowing everything down. To bend over and tie a shoelace required a dizzying pant-fest immediately thereafter. I would think to pack something but forget what it was by the time I had unloaded the compression sack containing it.
The day before we had woke to the sounds of boots marching past our tent as teams came through our camp enroute to the summit from Berlin Camp on the Normal Route. Looking up at the hill there had been several strings of headlamps picking their way through the pre-dawn darkness. But today there was none of that. Only one other team appeared to be on the move, the guided IMG Team we had more or less been traveling in tandem with from the start. They were already started up by 7:15, moving in single file at a slow deliberate pace.
It was 8:00 a.m. as we left high camp under clear blue skies with not a breath of wind. Ty led for the first stage that would take us up to Indepencia Hut. His pace was typically swift, but I did not mind the work at first as it encouraged the generation of body heat while we clawed our way up Aconcagua's bitter cold dark side. But eventually the thin air started to take its toll and I found myself wanting for the pace of the IMG Group. Not only was their pace more agreeable, but they had also opted to break left of the main ascent halfway up, carving a lateral traverse with a much kinder grade. As we approached this fork I hoped Ty would likewise break left, but, as is his custom, when faced with two trails headed to the same place Ty will always take the steeper. Though I have never actually asked him about this, I suppose it is based on the logic that since both trails go to the same place it is better to get there sooner instead of later. But at that moment I found myself frustrated, aching to ask Ty if it would be at all possible to pick a more difficult route up the hill. I had no way of knowing that the clarity of that moment and the layout of the scene it occurred at would come in very handy later in the day.
We arrived at Indepencia Hut as the IMG Group was finishing their break. We hydrated and ate a snack while Ty removed his left boot to thaw his big toe, which had gone numb in the cold. I offered to warm it against my stomach, as is common practice, but, now in the sunlight, Ty chose to thaw the toe against the warm boards of the hut. I sent a text message on the satellite phone advising Family that we had left High Camp and were now at 21,000 feet. The sun rapidly became more intense as we sat there. Now shifting from cold management to heat management, Ty and I each shed a layer. But as we stood to continue toward the long traverse Ty noticed something below us. "Uh oh," he commented, "take a look at those." The entire hemline of Aconcagua was crowded with clouds that looked very much like those of the previous day. If we continued up we could expect a rough time getting back down. Now 1,800 feet below the summit, we were above the clouds and would probably reach the summit before they caught up with us. We had the heavy clothing to gear up if we needed to during the descent, had certainly traveled in bad weather before (though nowhere near this high), and the IMG Group was out ahead of us breaking trail. It was one of those decisions you make with the best information you have at the time. In this case we judged the order of weather deterioration based on what we had seen the evening before. Ty and I could not have known how much worse it had probably been above the fog that shrouded our view. We decided to press on for the summit.
I led the next stage, which took us in short order to the balcony preceeding the traverse. Deceptively steep and interminably long, the traverse cut a long grade up a quarter-bowl formation that normally would have been bare rock. But the snows of the night before had fallen and frozen, raising the ante by creating a toboggan hill that a Climber would rocket down some 2,000 feet should he fall. "I wasn't expecting this," Ty commented with some dread. "Me either," I countered. "I don't suppose there are any fixed lines since this is normally all rocks and dirt," I added. "No, I doubt there are," Ty posited. We cached our trekking poles and put our crampons on. With ice axes in hand we then set out on the traverse, careful, measured, and wide awake.
We gained another 1,000 vertical feet and caught up with the IMG Group again by the time we had completed the traverse. At one point we passed them, stopping to rest a short distance up the trail. When they trudged by us a few minutes later one of the Climbers asked me how many of the Seven Summits this will be for me. (He had asked about the other mountains we had climbed as we checked in at the Penitentes Hotel Ayelen). "Four, if I should be so lucky to summit," I said. "That's great," the Climber said with a big smile. But IMG Guide Peter Anderson felt differently. "How many beautiful mountains have you climbed," he asked with more than a little pretension. "Two," I said, thinking of Denali and Kilimanjaro. "That's really a shame," he offered in false condolence, "I've climbed over 150 beautiful mountains!" Having not invited the discussion, I wasn't sure why he felt it necessary to jam it down my throat. Confused by what had happened, I said nothing as they continued by. We sat there in silence for moment. Then Ty said "Don't let him get to you, Mauro. Sometimes people just need to hear F#*@ You!"
I had been concerned about how the Guides might treat Ty and I in the course of this expedition. In a sense we were an advertisement for not using them. We stood out as a team of only two, and to whatever extent we succeeded it might speak to the notion that Guides weren't necessary. But, with the exception of this particular Guide, I found the case to be quite the opposite. There seemed to be a respect the Guides felt for us; "two guys doing it on their own the way it use to be," is how Ben Marshal, an IMG Guide, described us. They were generous with their advice and friendly socializing at camp. For the record, I believe very much in using professional Guides. On the whole I have been exceedingly impressed with their abilities and commitment to their clients. On many occasions I have seen Guides get marginal Climbers to the summit of a major mountain. I have seen them porter client gear up to the next camp during rest days. I have seen them put their own safety at risk time and time again. They work long days, often trying to please wealthy clients who refuse to recognize this is not a luxury excursion. They do all of this for the love of the mountains and a chance to introduce someone else to that love. And for this they typically have no benefits, not even medical, and are paid $180 a day for a Lead Guide, $120 a day for an Assistant Guide. Without the sometimes generous but never reliable tips at the end of each trip most Guides would live beneath the poverty level.
We caught up with the IMG Group again at the base of the Caneleta, a steep 800 foot ascent weaving around and over boulders the size of cars. I had saved something extra in my energy reserves for this, having read many accounts of Climbers whose will was broken on the Caneleta, the final challenge to the summit. A month earlier a man attempting to be the first person from Thailand to summit Aconcagua so completely expended himself on the Caneleta that he died upon reaching the summit. There his body lay for several weeks while authorities tried to figure out what to do about it.
As Ty and I hydrated and made minor gear adjustments, the IMG Group started for the summit. Knowing we would catch up with them, we took some extra time to rest in the safety of a small cave-like hollow at the base of the wall. A snow was falling lightly and the dense fog that had followed close behind us during the ascent now began consuming our surroundings. We strapped on our packs and began clawing our way up the Caneleta.
The first four hundred feet of trail dodged in and out from beneath a low overhang at the base of a rock wall. The route threaded scant passages up ambitious inclines like a Gregorian staircase. We stopped often to breath hard, sometimes taking only a few steps before having to stop again. I scrutinized my efficiency of movement and repeated the mantra "simple thoughts, simple thoughts." At some point it all started to be like an out-of-body experience. I could see myself laboring hard, yet feel none of it. There was no more thinking. My body was on automatic pilot, a function drummed into its reptilian being through the many hours I had spent on the Cedar Lakes Trail. I could hear my breathing, see my foot plants disappear beneath me.
Then the trail opened up a bit to where one might have enjoyed a pleasant view had the clouds and fog not completely over-taken us. As we made painfully slow progress up the final 400 feet I stopped bothering to check my altimeter. It could say we were twenty feet away. It could say we were two hundred feet away. At this point it didn't matter. I knew we were going to the summit regardless. Normally this realization brings a burst of energy to me, almost a tearful joy. But on this occasion I felt nothing beyond a primal need for oxygen. Then Ty stopped, cast off his pack, and turned to look down at me still thirty feet below him. "Come on Mauro," he said, "lets finish this together!" After stopping four more times to breath, I finally stepped onto the summit of Aconcagua, 22,841 feet above sea level, the highest point in the Americas. Ty hugged me. Then gesturing to a modest makeshift monument a few steps away, said "there it is."
We walked together to the monument, a pile of rocks with a steel crucifix stuck in it. Beads, ribbons, and shredded prayer flags adorned the cross. I handed Ty my camera and pulled out the laminated photos of my Boys, my Mom, and my love, Lin. After posing for a summit photo with each I traded places with Ty to record the moments he would share with family on the summit. Then IMG Guide Ben Marshall said "Team photo! Here, let me get a picture of you two together!" I handed him my camera, then offered to do the same for his team, a group of eight Climbers, two IMG Guides, and a local Argentine Guide. Then I dug the satellite phone from my pack and called my Mother back in Monroe, Washington. I told her I was on the summit and couldn't talk as the weather was going bad and we needed to start down. She congratulated me and offered a mother's cautions for a safe descent. Then I called Lin. When I heard her voice the numbness that had been my existence for hours broke open and a flood of emotion came gushing out. "Hey there you sexy stack of pancakes," I said, offering what had long ago become a standard greeting of ours. I was struggling to hold back the tears, knowing I would still need everything I had left to get down to High Camp. We spoke for one minute and twenty-three seconds.
I was kneeling on the ground as I spoke into the sat phone, my face down to avoid the snow and growing wind. When I looked up the entire IMG Group was gone. They had quite suddenly left the summit. "Hey, you wanna call your Fam," I asked, extending the phone toward Ty. He looked very nervous and unsettled. "No, I'm a round tripper," he replied. Though I was not exactly sure what that meant, it seemed clear he had no intention of chatting on the phone at that moment. Then Ty's eyes grew large and he shouted "WHOA!" He started backing around in circles shouting "WHOA WHOA WHOA!" Then he threw down his hat and rubbed his head. "My hair is crackling," he exclaimed. I stood to approach him, and as the steel points of my crampons contacted the ground an electrical current passed through my feet and ankles. Now Ty was running in circles again and I realized we were in the middle of an electrical storm. I remembered the thunder from the night before. I thought there is a very good chance we are about to die. "We gotta get the F&#@ off this mountain," I screamed, then throwing my pack off the summit. Ty, having already put his pack back on, dashed down the trail with myself close behind. We came upon my pack thirty feet below the summit. I had taken a glove off to dial the sat phone and now could not find it. Frostbite being a certain outcome, I scrambled through my pack looking for the glove. It was immensely frustrating, as I knew at that moment we should be descending with all haste. Then a quick thinking Ty handed me a spare pair of gloves from his pack. "Do you think we should get rid of our axes," I asked him, considering the lightning rod properties of their metal construction. "No way," he argued, "we're gonna need them to get down, Dude."
We descended at what seemed a frenetic pace, though several seconds probably separated each step. We were both charged with adrenaline, squandering precious oxygen with the useless racing of our heart rates. "Focus, Dave," I repeated to myself, aware of the consequences of one ill-chosen step on this extremely steep pitch. The lower we descended the thicker the fog became. Visibility soon closed down to perhaps ten feet, but the trail winding down among the boulders was clear and well beaten. Suddenly a climber appeared in front of me. It was so sudden I almost ran into him from behind. It was IMG Guide Peter Anderson. He had one of their Climbers short-roped already. "Do you need any help here," I asked him. "No," he replied. We passed them and two other Climbers before coming to the next IMG Guide Ben Marshall, who also had a Climber short-roped. About this time we all arrived at the base of the Caneleta. Ducking into the cave, we started gearing up for what already looked like a fight to come. I put on my down summit coat, heavy mittens, balaclava, and goggles. My summit pants already on, I zipped the legs shut and checked all other clothing vents to make sure I was fully fortified.
It was at this point Ben, the kinder of the IMG Guides, approached Ty and I offering "Hey, if you guys wanna tailgate along with us that's cool." We accepted, believing greater safety lay in numbers and glad for their Argentine Guide whom we thought could probably find the way down blindfolded. The IMG Group left to start the Traverse. I remember looking at Ty one last time before we left the cave. His eyebrows raised, lips pursed tight within a snowy bramble of whiskers, his expression said this is serious.
We followed along just behind Peter, who was still short-roping a Climber who complained that he could not see. My own goggles were soon useless as the sticky pellet snow crusted over the vents on top and the lenses fogged. I switched over to my glacier glasses while still on the move. The wind and snow were obscuring the tracks in the trail, making it very difficult for the short-roped Climber to judge depth. As a consequence we were falling behind the rest of the group. I climbed around Peter and the troubled Climber dropping down in front of them to break trail in snow that was now almost knee deep. The fresh tracks helped the short-roped Climber see where to step and our pace improved. We caught up with the others at the balcony, where ice axes were traded for the trekking poles we had all cached there during the ascent.
A sense of relief showed in the faces of the Climbers. We had made it down the Caneleta, crossed the Traverse and now had only 1,400 feet of relatively easy descent down to High Camp. There was no exposure to falling. This was a wide-open ski slope-like hill we had all been able to study at length from High Camp. We were practically home. Ty decided to add some heavier clothing, so we remained at the balcony as the IMG Team resumed their descent. Just before leaving with them, the Argentine Guide put a hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Good luck,” he said. He apparently thought we had decided to separate from the group. He meant it kindly, and he meant it sincerely, but it wasn’t the kind of Good Luck a person gets very often. It wasn’t like the Good Luck you get when you are trying to pick up a spare at the bowling alley. It wasn’t like the Good Luck someone offers as you leave for a job interview. This was the kind of Good Luck that says I hope you make it down alive. Last year a Guide and Climber did not. They became lost below this point and froze to death.
“Go ahead,” Ty urged me, concerned about holding us up. “NO,” I refused, “I am NOT leaving you!” I peered over the edge of the balcony. They had all disappeared into the fog below.
Ty finished with his gear and we started down the hill. Again we caught up with the group at the next ledge. Then, in one long single-file line, we resumed our descent toward High Camp. By this time it had been ten hours since we left for the summit. Many of us were out of water. Most of us were out of energy. The adrenaline had worn off. I assumed we were close, an uneventful slog down to the tents. Had I looked at my altimeter I would have realized we were still two hours away. Soon I slipped back into that out of body trance. I had been running on empty for at least two hours and wasn’t even sure what was keeping me going. My feet were chunking down hard, the skeletal structure of my legs forced to go it alone but for muscles no longer able to set me down easy. My vision blurred slightly with each jarring step, steps I was no longer consciously taking. It was like sitting in a chair while someone whacks it with a baseball bat. Ty and I were in the middle of the IMG Group at first, separated by one of their Climbers. But the order kept changing as some Climbers descended faster than others. Ty, a fast descender, passed two more IMG Climbers, assuming I was passing them with him. I, however, am a slow descender under the best of circumstances. I am cautious with my steps, careful with my knees, economical with my energy. Even the short-roped Climber at the very end of the line passed me. I soon fell behind.
I remember realizing I was alone, watching unfamiliar landscape go by, not caring. The twelve Climbers in front of me left a clear trampled trail into the fog. I would just follow it. Though I was now far enough back that I could no longer hear them, I continued on without worry. After all, I reasoned, we had to be very near camp.
About this time, an annoyed Peter Anderson shouted at Ty. "Hey, Alaska. YOU'RE NOT WITH THE GROUP," adding almost incidentally "and you're leaving your friend behind." Ty stepped out of the line, expecting to see me close behind him, scripting sharp words for a Guide who had for no apparent reason treated us with contempt from the very start. But I was not there. He stood looking up the trail as the IMG Group passed, continuing downhill into increasingly heavy snowfall.
Only a few minutes passed before I emerged from the world inside the mist. “Hey there, Super Climber,” Ty greeted me. “I’m gased,” I said, “we must be pretty close though.” Ty looked confused. “We have another 800 feet to go,” he said. "No way," I protested. "Way," he said, thrusting his altimeter in front of me. As we stood there talking the fog cleared for a moment and I thought I saw the last of the IMG Group traversing to the left between some boulders. Then a group of four climbers packing a carry passed from right to left through the same clearing.
The clearing grew dense with fog again as Ty and I descended down into it. But there the trail we were following became interspersed with several other sets of tracks, some of which were traversing, others descending, and still others now impossible to interpret but for the snow that had already filled them in. Nothing about the large boulders around us looked familiar. We realized the IMG Group was now gone and we would have to find our own way down.
I told Ty that I thought I had seen the last of the IMG Group traversing left around the biggest boulder, but he somehow doubted this. Though he had not seen the IMG Climbers, Ty had seen the group of four making a carry. He believed the trail traversing around the boulder was made by them and that they were probably descending to Berlin camp on the Normal Route. To follow that set of tracks would mean we were not lost, but it would take us to a camp 600 feet below our own, neither of us having the requisite energy to then ascend to High Camp. We climbed down a short distance, then back up again. We looked for another set of tracks that might make more sense.
It was not unreasonable for Ty to doubt what I had seen. Climbers occasionally hallucinate in high altitude. On Denali I had experienced this as my deceased Brother, Danny, walked beside me the entire distance across "The Football Field" at 19,000 feet. He was smoking a cigarette and asking me how it was going. "I think you're gonna make it," he said at one point. I smiled at him. Then I said "But Danny,you're dead." "Yeah. I know," he agreed sadly, then vanishing with a gust of subzero wind.
"I just need to sit down for a minute," I told Ty, plopping down right were I stood. He studied me for a moment, then said "I sure would hate to get lost right about now." Then it hit me. This was exactly how it happens. An exhausted Climber sits down to rest and never gets up. They say death by exhaustion, like that of freezing, is a relatively comfortable death. At that moment I was very comfortable. I could have sat there for hours. Sat there while the last of the light faded. Sat there while the snow hid any remaining tracks. Panicked, I stood up. "Let's get down this hill now," I said.
Ty was was debating the various trails a few minutes later. I still believed I had seen the IMG Group in the fog. But now something else occurred to me. "They took a different route up the hill,"I said, "That's why nothing looks familiar. They descended by the same route they went up!" I told Ty how he, head down and grinding up hill, had taken the steep ascent to the right that morning while the IMG Group traversed to the left around some boulder outcrops. He hadn't noticed this at the time. "Are you sure," he asked. "Absolutely, I was mad as hell at you for taking the most aggressive line of ascent." "You were," he questioned with surprise. Thrilled to connect the dots, I said "Yeah! I thought you were being a real S*#@head!" I started down the trail but Ty did not move. Still seeking some form of concrete proof, he posited "so A decision is better than no decision?" "Yes," I responded. "Worst case we end up at Berlin Camp and find someone with room for the night in their tent. But I think this is the trail back to our camp and we can't afford to lose any more daylight." Ty started down toward me, still unconvinced but willing to go along. Then an idea came to him. "Crampons," he said. "The IMG Group was still wearing crampons. The group headed down to Berlin Camp would not have needed crampons!" We studied the tracks in the trail below me carefully. Clear crampon marks scarred them thoroughly. That was good enough.
A few hundred feet lower we came to the fork in the trail where our two paths had separated that morning. "This is it," I exclaimed. We continued down the trail until a modest cluster of tents appeared below and to our left. We decided to ask these Climbers where High Camp was, but as we got closer we could identify them as the IMG Group. We knew our tent lay less than a hundred feet below this. We were home.
It was eight P.M. when we pulled into camp. The AAI group camped next to us had become worried and already had hot bottles of an orange energy drink ready. I called Lin on the sat phone to report that we had made it safely back to camp. I was spent. Removing my boots and crampons seemed like a monumental task. I crawled into my sleeping bag with full summit clothing still on and passed quickly into a deep deep slumber.
The following is my account of what happened during our summit attempt of Aconcagua on January 24th, 2010. I have made a best effort to reassemble the events, persons, times, and places with the greatest accuracy. But the nature of recalling such things from persons who where oxygen deprived at the time of occurrence is fraught with errors of omission and fact. So there you have it. This is one man's version and nothing more.
The day before we left for the summit had started out clear and idealic, a fist full of salt in the wound opened up when our summit attempt had to be scrapped. But clouds began forming in the lowlands by early afternoon, slowly working their way up all sides of the mountain to converge just above High Camp and dump snow by mid day. Just before the first snow fell Ty looked out the tent window. "Hey, Super Climber. Check it out. Pea Soup." Sure enough, the visibility had been reduced to a few hundred feet. We looked at each other thinking the same thing. It was a good thing we didn't go up. This would be the forecasted snow storm, the one that would drop 3 inches, then clear out to leave perfect summit conditions. As a pellet snow began peppering our tent the report of heavy thunder confirmed how nasty things were above us. As Climbers are prone to doing, we chose to focus on the now excellent prospects for the next day's summit, offering no energy to the speculation of what circumstances we might then be in had we left for the summit that morning as planned.
The three inches of snow turned out to be more like five. There had also been a fair bit of wind. But by morning all was right. We celebrated the convenience of scooping snow right outside the tent door, not even having to leave the comfort of our shelter to harvest the raw material for water. We had decided to leave at 7:00 a.m. after comparing strategies with some of the other teams at High Camp. Since the first several hours would see us climbing the south side of the mountain we would be in the frigid shadow of Aconcagua. To leave earlier would mean still more time in sub-zero temperatures and increased exposure to frostbite. But in spite of our best efforts it took longer to get ready than we had expected. The thin air had a way of slowing everything down. To bend over and tie a shoelace required a dizzying pant-fest immediately thereafter. I would think to pack something but forget what it was by the time I had unloaded the compression sack containing it.
The day before we had woke to the sounds of boots marching past our tent as teams came through our camp enroute to the summit from Berlin Camp on the Normal Route. Looking up at the hill there had been several strings of headlamps picking their way through the pre-dawn darkness. But today there was none of that. Only one other team appeared to be on the move, the guided IMG Team we had more or less been traveling in tandem with from the start. They were already started up by 7:15, moving in single file at a slow deliberate pace.
It was 8:00 a.m. as we left high camp under clear blue skies with not a breath of wind. Ty led for the first stage that would take us up to Indepencia Hut. His pace was typically swift, but I did not mind the work at first as it encouraged the generation of body heat while we clawed our way up Aconcagua's bitter cold dark side. But eventually the thin air started to take its toll and I found myself wanting for the pace of the IMG Group. Not only was their pace more agreeable, but they had also opted to break left of the main ascent halfway up, carving a lateral traverse with a much kinder grade. As we approached this fork I hoped Ty would likewise break left, but, as is his custom, when faced with two trails headed to the same place Ty will always take the steeper. Though I have never actually asked him about this, I suppose it is based on the logic that since both trails go to the same place it is better to get there sooner instead of later. But at that moment I found myself frustrated, aching to ask Ty if it would be at all possible to pick a more difficult route up the hill. I had no way of knowing that the clarity of that moment and the layout of the scene it occurred at would come in very handy later in the day.
We arrived at Indepencia Hut as the IMG Group was finishing their break. We hydrated and ate a snack while Ty removed his left boot to thaw his big toe, which had gone numb in the cold. I offered to warm it against my stomach, as is common practice, but, now in the sunlight, Ty chose to thaw the toe against the warm boards of the hut. I sent a text message on the satellite phone advising Family that we had left High Camp and were now at 21,000 feet. The sun rapidly became more intense as we sat there. Now shifting from cold management to heat management, Ty and I each shed a layer. But as we stood to continue toward the long traverse Ty noticed something below us. "Uh oh," he commented, "take a look at those." The entire hemline of Aconcagua was crowded with clouds that looked very much like those of the previous day. If we continued up we could expect a rough time getting back down. Now 1,800 feet below the summit, we were above the clouds and would probably reach the summit before they caught up with us. We had the heavy clothing to gear up if we needed to during the descent, had certainly traveled in bad weather before (though nowhere near this high), and the IMG Group was out ahead of us breaking trail. It was one of those decisions you make with the best information you have at the time. In this case we judged the order of weather deterioration based on what we had seen the evening before. Ty and I could not have known how much worse it had probably been above the fog that shrouded our view. We decided to press on for the summit.
I led the next stage, which took us in short order to the balcony preceeding the traverse. Deceptively steep and interminably long, the traverse cut a long grade up a quarter-bowl formation that normally would have been bare rock. But the snows of the night before had fallen and frozen, raising the ante by creating a toboggan hill that a Climber would rocket down some 2,000 feet should he fall. "I wasn't expecting this," Ty commented with some dread. "Me either," I countered. "I don't suppose there are any fixed lines since this is normally all rocks and dirt," I added. "No, I doubt there are," Ty posited. We cached our trekking poles and put our crampons on. With ice axes in hand we then set out on the traverse, careful, measured, and wide awake.
We gained another 1,000 vertical feet and caught up with the IMG Group again by the time we had completed the traverse. At one point we passed them, stopping to rest a short distance up the trail. When they trudged by us a few minutes later one of the Climbers asked me how many of the Seven Summits this will be for me. (He had asked about the other mountains we had climbed as we checked in at the Penitentes Hotel Ayelen). "Four, if I should be so lucky to summit," I said. "That's great," the Climber said with a big smile. But IMG Guide Peter Anderson felt differently. "How many beautiful mountains have you climbed," he asked with more than a little pretension. "Two," I said, thinking of Denali and Kilimanjaro. "That's really a shame," he offered in false condolence, "I've climbed over 150 beautiful mountains!" Having not invited the discussion, I wasn't sure why he felt it necessary to jam it down my throat. Confused by what had happened, I said nothing as they continued by. We sat there in silence for moment. Then Ty said "Don't let him get to you, Mauro. Sometimes people just need to hear F#*@ You!"
I had been concerned about how the Guides might treat Ty and I in the course of this expedition. In a sense we were an advertisement for not using them. We stood out as a team of only two, and to whatever extent we succeeded it might speak to the notion that Guides weren't necessary. But, with the exception of this particular Guide, I found the case to be quite the opposite. There seemed to be a respect the Guides felt for us; "two guys doing it on their own the way it use to be," is how Ben Marshal, an IMG Guide, described us. They were generous with their advice and friendly socializing at camp. For the record, I believe very much in using professional Guides. On the whole I have been exceedingly impressed with their abilities and commitment to their clients. On many occasions I have seen Guides get marginal Climbers to the summit of a major mountain. I have seen them porter client gear up to the next camp during rest days. I have seen them put their own safety at risk time and time again. They work long days, often trying to please wealthy clients who refuse to recognize this is not a luxury excursion. They do all of this for the love of the mountains and a chance to introduce someone else to that love. And for this they typically have no benefits, not even medical, and are paid $180 a day for a Lead Guide, $120 a day for an Assistant Guide. Without the sometimes generous but never reliable tips at the end of each trip most Guides would live beneath the poverty level.
We caught up with the IMG Group again at the base of the Caneleta, a steep 800 foot ascent weaving around and over boulders the size of cars. I had saved something extra in my energy reserves for this, having read many accounts of Climbers whose will was broken on the Caneleta, the final challenge to the summit. A month earlier a man attempting to be the first person from Thailand to summit Aconcagua so completely expended himself on the Caneleta that he died upon reaching the summit. There his body lay for several weeks while authorities tried to figure out what to do about it.
As Ty and I hydrated and made minor gear adjustments, the IMG Group started for the summit. Knowing we would catch up with them, we took some extra time to rest in the safety of a small cave-like hollow at the base of the wall. A snow was falling lightly and the dense fog that had followed close behind us during the ascent now began consuming our surroundings. We strapped on our packs and began clawing our way up the Caneleta.
The first four hundred feet of trail dodged in and out from beneath a low overhang at the base of a rock wall. The route threaded scant passages up ambitious inclines like a Gregorian staircase. We stopped often to breath hard, sometimes taking only a few steps before having to stop again. I scrutinized my efficiency of movement and repeated the mantra "simple thoughts, simple thoughts." At some point it all started to be like an out-of-body experience. I could see myself laboring hard, yet feel none of it. There was no more thinking. My body was on automatic pilot, a function drummed into its reptilian being through the many hours I had spent on the Cedar Lakes Trail. I could hear my breathing, see my foot plants disappear beneath me.
Then the trail opened up a bit to where one might have enjoyed a pleasant view had the clouds and fog not completely over-taken us. As we made painfully slow progress up the final 400 feet I stopped bothering to check my altimeter. It could say we were twenty feet away. It could say we were two hundred feet away. At this point it didn't matter. I knew we were going to the summit regardless. Normally this realization brings a burst of energy to me, almost a tearful joy. But on this occasion I felt nothing beyond a primal need for oxygen. Then Ty stopped, cast off his pack, and turned to look down at me still thirty feet below him. "Come on Mauro," he said, "lets finish this together!" After stopping four more times to breath, I finally stepped onto the summit of Aconcagua, 22,841 feet above sea level, the highest point in the Americas. Ty hugged me. Then gesturing to a modest makeshift monument a few steps away, said "there it is."
We walked together to the monument, a pile of rocks with a steel crucifix stuck in it. Beads, ribbons, and shredded prayer flags adorned the cross. I handed Ty my camera and pulled out the laminated photos of my Boys, my Mom, and my love, Lin. After posing for a summit photo with each I traded places with Ty to record the moments he would share with family on the summit. Then IMG Guide Ben Marshall said "Team photo! Here, let me get a picture of you two together!" I handed him my camera, then offered to do the same for his team, a group of eight Climbers, two IMG Guides, and a local Argentine Guide. Then I dug the satellite phone from my pack and called my Mother back in Monroe, Washington. I told her I was on the summit and couldn't talk as the weather was going bad and we needed to start down. She congratulated me and offered a mother's cautions for a safe descent. Then I called Lin. When I heard her voice the numbness that had been my existence for hours broke open and a flood of emotion came gushing out. "Hey there you sexy stack of pancakes," I said, offering what had long ago become a standard greeting of ours. I was struggling to hold back the tears, knowing I would still need everything I had left to get down to High Camp. We spoke for one minute and twenty-three seconds.
I was kneeling on the ground as I spoke into the sat phone, my face down to avoid the snow and growing wind. When I looked up the entire IMG Group was gone. They had quite suddenly left the summit. "Hey, you wanna call your Fam," I asked, extending the phone toward Ty. He looked very nervous and unsettled. "No, I'm a round tripper," he replied. Though I was not exactly sure what that meant, it seemed clear he had no intention of chatting on the phone at that moment. Then Ty's eyes grew large and he shouted "WHOA!" He started backing around in circles shouting "WHOA WHOA WHOA!" Then he threw down his hat and rubbed his head. "My hair is crackling," he exclaimed. I stood to approach him, and as the steel points of my crampons contacted the ground an electrical current passed through my feet and ankles. Now Ty was running in circles again and I realized we were in the middle of an electrical storm. I remembered the thunder from the night before. I thought there is a very good chance we are about to die. "We gotta get the F&#@ off this mountain," I screamed, then throwing my pack off the summit. Ty, having already put his pack back on, dashed down the trail with myself close behind. We came upon my pack thirty feet below the summit. I had taken a glove off to dial the sat phone and now could not find it. Frostbite being a certain outcome, I scrambled through my pack looking for the glove. It was immensely frustrating, as I knew at that moment we should be descending with all haste. Then a quick thinking Ty handed me a spare pair of gloves from his pack. "Do you think we should get rid of our axes," I asked him, considering the lightning rod properties of their metal construction. "No way," he argued, "we're gonna need them to get down, Dude."
We descended at what seemed a frenetic pace, though several seconds probably separated each step. We were both charged with adrenaline, squandering precious oxygen with the useless racing of our heart rates. "Focus, Dave," I repeated to myself, aware of the consequences of one ill-chosen step on this extremely steep pitch. The lower we descended the thicker the fog became. Visibility soon closed down to perhaps ten feet, but the trail winding down among the boulders was clear and well beaten. Suddenly a climber appeared in front of me. It was so sudden I almost ran into him from behind. It was IMG Guide Peter Anderson. He had one of their Climbers short-roped already. "Do you need any help here," I asked him. "No," he replied. We passed them and two other Climbers before coming to the next IMG Guide Ben Marshall, who also had a Climber short-roped. About this time we all arrived at the base of the Caneleta. Ducking into the cave, we started gearing up for what already looked like a fight to come. I put on my down summit coat, heavy mittens, balaclava, and goggles. My summit pants already on, I zipped the legs shut and checked all other clothing vents to make sure I was fully fortified.
It was at this point Ben, the kinder of the IMG Guides, approached Ty and I offering "Hey, if you guys wanna tailgate along with us that's cool." We accepted, believing greater safety lay in numbers and glad for their Argentine Guide whom we thought could probably find the way down blindfolded. The IMG Group left to start the Traverse. I remember looking at Ty one last time before we left the cave. His eyebrows raised, lips pursed tight within a snowy bramble of whiskers, his expression said this is serious.
We followed along just behind Peter, who was still short-roping a Climber who complained that he could not see. My own goggles were soon useless as the sticky pellet snow crusted over the vents on top and the lenses fogged. I switched over to my glacier glasses while still on the move. The wind and snow were obscuring the tracks in the trail, making it very difficult for the short-roped Climber to judge depth. As a consequence we were falling behind the rest of the group. I climbed around Peter and the troubled Climber dropping down in front of them to break trail in snow that was now almost knee deep. The fresh tracks helped the short-roped Climber see where to step and our pace improved. We caught up with the others at the balcony, where ice axes were traded for the trekking poles we had all cached there during the ascent.
A sense of relief showed in the faces of the Climbers. We had made it down the Caneleta, crossed the Traverse and now had only 1,400 feet of relatively easy descent down to High Camp. There was no exposure to falling. This was a wide-open ski slope-like hill we had all been able to study at length from High Camp. We were practically home. Ty decided to add some heavier clothing, so we remained at the balcony as the IMG Team resumed their descent. Just before leaving with them, the Argentine Guide put a hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Good luck,” he said. He apparently thought we had decided to separate from the group. He meant it kindly, and he meant it sincerely, but it wasn’t the kind of Good Luck a person gets very often. It wasn’t like the Good Luck you get when you are trying to pick up a spare at the bowling alley. It wasn’t like the Good Luck someone offers as you leave for a job interview. This was the kind of Good Luck that says I hope you make it down alive. Last year a Guide and Climber did not. They became lost below this point and froze to death.
“Go ahead,” Ty urged me, concerned about holding us up. “NO,” I refused, “I am NOT leaving you!” I peered over the edge of the balcony. They had all disappeared into the fog below.
Ty finished with his gear and we started down the hill. Again we caught up with the group at the next ledge. Then, in one long single-file line, we resumed our descent toward High Camp. By this time it had been ten hours since we left for the summit. Many of us were out of water. Most of us were out of energy. The adrenaline had worn off. I assumed we were close, an uneventful slog down to the tents. Had I looked at my altimeter I would have realized we were still two hours away. Soon I slipped back into that out of body trance. I had been running on empty for at least two hours and wasn’t even sure what was keeping me going. My feet were chunking down hard, the skeletal structure of my legs forced to go it alone but for muscles no longer able to set me down easy. My vision blurred slightly with each jarring step, steps I was no longer consciously taking. It was like sitting in a chair while someone whacks it with a baseball bat. Ty and I were in the middle of the IMG Group at first, separated by one of their Climbers. But the order kept changing as some Climbers descended faster than others. Ty, a fast descender, passed two more IMG Climbers, assuming I was passing them with him. I, however, am a slow descender under the best of circumstances. I am cautious with my steps, careful with my knees, economical with my energy. Even the short-roped Climber at the very end of the line passed me. I soon fell behind.
I remember realizing I was alone, watching unfamiliar landscape go by, not caring. The twelve Climbers in front of me left a clear trampled trail into the fog. I would just follow it. Though I was now far enough back that I could no longer hear them, I continued on without worry. After all, I reasoned, we had to be very near camp.
About this time, an annoyed Peter Anderson shouted at Ty. "Hey, Alaska. YOU'RE NOT WITH THE GROUP," adding almost incidentally "and you're leaving your friend behind." Ty stepped out of the line, expecting to see me close behind him, scripting sharp words for a Guide who had for no apparent reason treated us with contempt from the very start. But I was not there. He stood looking up the trail as the IMG Group passed, continuing downhill into increasingly heavy snowfall.
Only a few minutes passed before I emerged from the world inside the mist. “Hey there, Super Climber,” Ty greeted me. “I’m gased,” I said, “we must be pretty close though.” Ty looked confused. “We have another 800 feet to go,” he said. "No way," I protested. "Way," he said, thrusting his altimeter in front of me. As we stood there talking the fog cleared for a moment and I thought I saw the last of the IMG Group traversing to the left between some boulders. Then a group of four climbers packing a carry passed from right to left through the same clearing.
The clearing grew dense with fog again as Ty and I descended down into it. But there the trail we were following became interspersed with several other sets of tracks, some of which were traversing, others descending, and still others now impossible to interpret but for the snow that had already filled them in. Nothing about the large boulders around us looked familiar. We realized the IMG Group was now gone and we would have to find our own way down.
I told Ty that I thought I had seen the last of the IMG Group traversing left around the biggest boulder, but he somehow doubted this. Though he had not seen the IMG Climbers, Ty had seen the group of four making a carry. He believed the trail traversing around the boulder was made by them and that they were probably descending to Berlin camp on the Normal Route. To follow that set of tracks would mean we were not lost, but it would take us to a camp 600 feet below our own, neither of us having the requisite energy to then ascend to High Camp. We climbed down a short distance, then back up again. We looked for another set of tracks that might make more sense.
It was not unreasonable for Ty to doubt what I had seen. Climbers occasionally hallucinate in high altitude. On Denali I had experienced this as my deceased Brother, Danny, walked beside me the entire distance across "The Football Field" at 19,000 feet. He was smoking a cigarette and asking me how it was going. "I think you're gonna make it," he said at one point. I smiled at him. Then I said "But Danny,you're dead." "Yeah. I know," he agreed sadly, then vanishing with a gust of subzero wind.
"I just need to sit down for a minute," I told Ty, plopping down right were I stood. He studied me for a moment, then said "I sure would hate to get lost right about now." Then it hit me. This was exactly how it happens. An exhausted Climber sits down to rest and never gets up. They say death by exhaustion, like that of freezing, is a relatively comfortable death. At that moment I was very comfortable. I could have sat there for hours. Sat there while the last of the light faded. Sat there while the snow hid any remaining tracks. Panicked, I stood up. "Let's get down this hill now," I said.
Ty was was debating the various trails a few minutes later. I still believed I had seen the IMG Group in the fog. But now something else occurred to me. "They took a different route up the hill,"I said, "That's why nothing looks familiar. They descended by the same route they went up!" I told Ty how he, head down and grinding up hill, had taken the steep ascent to the right that morning while the IMG Group traversed to the left around some boulder outcrops. He hadn't noticed this at the time. "Are you sure," he asked. "Absolutely, I was mad as hell at you for taking the most aggressive line of ascent." "You were," he questioned with surprise. Thrilled to connect the dots, I said "Yeah! I thought you were being a real S*#@head!" I started down the trail but Ty did not move. Still seeking some form of concrete proof, he posited "so A decision is better than no decision?" "Yes," I responded. "Worst case we end up at Berlin Camp and find someone with room for the night in their tent. But I think this is the trail back to our camp and we can't afford to lose any more daylight." Ty started down toward me, still unconvinced but willing to go along. Then an idea came to him. "Crampons," he said. "The IMG Group was still wearing crampons. The group headed down to Berlin Camp would not have needed crampons!" We studied the tracks in the trail below me carefully. Clear crampon marks scarred them thoroughly. That was good enough.
A few hundred feet lower we came to the fork in the trail where our two paths had separated that morning. "This is it," I exclaimed. We continued down the trail until a modest cluster of tents appeared below and to our left. We decided to ask these Climbers where High Camp was, but as we got closer we could identify them as the IMG Group. We knew our tent lay less than a hundred feet below this. We were home.
It was eight P.M. when we pulled into camp. The AAI group camped next to us had become worried and already had hot bottles of an orange energy drink ready. I called Lin on the sat phone to report that we had made it safely back to camp. I was spent. Removing my boots and crampons seemed like a monumental task. I crawled into my sleeping bag with full summit clothing still on and passed quickly into a deep deep slumber.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Sniffing Ammonia
I knocked around camp the rest of the morning, surprised by my own anger, willing to decree to anyone who would listen to me complain about "what a sh#t hole this place is." Though proper sanitation is as hard to find as a good Amish Casino, the level of contempt I exuded seemed, even to me, to be overdone. After all, the snow-capped summits of the Andes lay scattered and complex below us in geologic testimony. On a better day back in Bellingham looking down on these would not be an option. "Look," I said aloud (I think) to myself as I stood with hands in pockets at the edge of the 3,000 foot drop-off that defines the southern edge of camp. "Look at those mountains and shake it off, Dave!" But I could not. Then I realized what was happening.
My Senior year of High School I turned out for the football team. Lacking speed, size, height, and strength, I was put on the team our Varsity squad practiced on. Myself, and the rest of the cannon fodder saw almost no actual game time as we were typically injured by Friday night. But we got to suit up and follow the real players around like a dog grateful to the master who kicks him. My favorite part of this was the pre-game locker room talk by the Coach; not so much for the words (few Coaches are very good at inspirational speeches) but for the behaviors displayed. My clearest memory is John Callahan, a five foot six defensive lineman who easily weighed in north of 250 pounds. John would sit there during the pep-talk and force himself to sniff ammonia strips, recoiling from each waft with a wild-eyed look that said "whoever just did that to me has got an ass-kicking coming!" Then he would take another sniff.
In my own way I was sniffing ammonia this morning ...and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I will need that wild-eyed fight when the time comes.
The AAI team moved into High Camp this afternoon. Now absent Scary Steve from Idaho, they are a team of six. There are four Climbers: Scott (a retired stockbroker from Calgary), Tony (a scrappy New Yorker who has summitted Denali and is clearly the best bet among the group to stand atop Aconcagua), Steve (a retired Engineer from Chicago), and Brian (my Kilimanjaro Teammate from Minnesota). Plus there are two Guides: The ever-affable and remarkably tireless Aiden, and the linguistically colorful Kevin. Ty and I chatted with the AAI Team as they set up next to our tent. I watched Brian carefully, evaluating his stability, efficiency, and energy. In a candid moment several days ago Brian admitted to me his concerns over how he would do up high. "I just want to make it to High Camp," he said, adding "that's my goal."
"That seems like a reasonable goal," I responded, adding "you can always see how you feel from there." I had a pretty good idea how Brian would be feeling and privately expected if he made it to High Camp he would not remain there long.
I was wrong.
Brian looked solid. His footing seemed confident, his strength intact, and contrary to the quiet inward persona of a sick Climber, Brian joked among his team mates, commenting, as is his habit, with too much information on his private body functions.
"We're all on Diomox," Kevin had commented earlier when I asked how they were doing. But Brian later came over to clarify that HE was the exception. "I just want you to know, I'm not on the Diomox," he told me, aware of my journaling and careful with the precision of posterity.
Steve from Chicago soon gathered up an altitude headache and retired to his tent. Unable to carry any loads between camps, he has already accepted the implausibility of attempting the summit. This will be his point of return. I would guess Steve to be in his mid sixties. That given, to suffer the discomforts of these days and grunt all the way to almost 20,000 feet is both courageous and impressive. He seems at peace with this outcome.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Not Our day.
We woke this morning to a brilliant sunrise and the promise symbolic of same. This would be our day. All of the work leading up to this moment was like the coiling of a snake. Coiling coiling coiling. Now all that pent up energy would be released in one exacting strike at the summit of Aconcagua.
Aside from attaining the summit, I have another powerful reason to welcome the successful execution of our goal; we can then go home.
We have given much to this endeavor and I am tired. I am on the outs with every form of foodstuff remaining among my provisions. My I-pod headphones are toast, having soaked in the sweat of my ears then frozen. Now all music sounds like a bum beating on a fender. My sense of smell has forgivingly turned itself off, routing scarce oxygen to more pressing functions. The stench waved goodbye to me yesterday, promising to wait down at base camp.But I know this place stinks and my possessions stink right along with it.
I am ugly. I took a picture of myself a moment ago to see how far things have gotten out of hand after almost three weeks without personal hygiene. It reminded me of a quote by Father Theodore Brown who was a guest one night on the David Letterman show. He said "I looked into the abyss. The abyss looked into me. And neither one of us liked what we saw."
I fired up our trusty MSR gas stove, put the pot on, and filled it with snow Ty had gathered the night before. But something wasn't right. The stove was putting forth a lame effort, burning a quiet blue mood-lite instead of the typical roaring flamethrower that says "the date is on!" At this rate it would take hours to generate the water we need to leave High Camp.
Ty, having considerable experience with camp stoves, began diagnosing the problem. After disassembling the pump system and lubricating the compression cup, he reassembled the stove and it worked perfectly. But by this time it was too late in the morning to leave for the summit. We would end up too high on the mountain too late in the day. "Besides," Ty reasoned, "we don't have enough snow gathered at this point to melt that much water."
He was right on all counts, by I was unwilling to let the day go, such was my desire to be headed home.
"I think we can still do this thing," I said, grabbing the snow bag and my ice axe. "I'm gonna go get some more snow." Ty said nothing.
"We're not going anywhere today," I said peevishly.
Slowly my fingers started coming back to life and the pain left me swearing through gritted teeth. I asked Ty if there was any hot water left over from the last melt. He said there wasn't, that he had put it into the water bottles where it quickly cooled. He wondered aloud if a chem-pack hand warmer would help, then recalling that it takes 20 minutes for those to heat up. I felt the pain and frustration inside me crash into each other like the twin tails of a boat's wake. "I JUST WANT TO GET OFF THIS F*#KING ROCK," I exclaimed.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Arrive high camp
We have arrived at high camp, elev 19620. The move went well, and though we both feel the measure of what it took to get here, we feel strong and excited about the possibility of summiting tomorrow. When Ty and I set out on this journey so many days ago we stepped forth into a big big world. Everything was new, exotic, interesting, and beckoned our senses in broad ways. But we have left that all behind, below us.
As children, my brother and I kept careful watch on the toilet paper roll. As it neared the end we would strip away the remaining lengths of tissue to get at the roll. To salvage the cardboard center meant we could fashion a telescope that would enable us to see fantastic things far far away.
Similarly, our vision has narrowed by the time Ty and I reach high camp. Our thoughts are simple, our focus singular. There is something fantastic in the whole of our limited vision. But soon we will step into the cardboard tube itself and see, if for a breif moment, we can be part of that world on the other side.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Breaking Ranks.
There was a commotion in camp 2 that night. It came from the area where the AAI Group had set up earlier in the day.
I've seen people come to their breaking point on expeditions. There was a moment during the Denali Climb when we all rushed from our tents to get our first good look at the summit. We had been snowed in for a few days at 9,000 feet. The weather broke, and someone shouted "Hey Guys, there it is!" Shoulder to shoulder we all lined up with faces skyward, too stunned to even raise our cameras at first. For some reason I looked back to survey the expressions. The word "elation" is not an overstatement. But there was one member not smiling. Kurt. He looked crushed, demoralized, done. The next morning he clipped in with a German Team heading down the mountain.
I had gotten to know the AAI members pretty well in the course of the meals we shared in our dinning tent at Plaza de Argentina. Except one member. A guy named Steve from Boise. Steve didn't talk much. Picking through the pieces of his meal, Steve would display the facial expressions of a man toiling with very deep and troubling thoughts. He complained about not being able to sleep, later bragging about how he angrily confronted the IMG Group and others for being too loud. He talked about a neighbor's dog back home that kept him awake and how he might tie that dog's leash to his car and drive him around town. In short, Steve scarred the hell out of all of us. This, of course, begs the question; "What to the climbing companies do to screen out those with mental illness issues?" Leaving aside the obvious kill-joy such folks can be on a trip participants pay big money to be on, they more importantly introduce a potentially life-threatening element should their affliction manifest itself during an exposed summit attempt. I am not sure what the best answer to this issue is, but I am willing to suggest that self-diagnosis would not be a part of it. Unfortunately, that is exactly what most climb organizers rely on.
Steve forced his way into his Guide's tent at 3a.m. saying he couldn't sleep in his tent, demanding that he be taken down the mountain immediately. His Guide could be heard explaining in remarkably soothing tones how it was not safe to be on the trail in the middle of the night. Steve demanded. His Guide declined, telling him to go back to bed, pack his stuff up in the morning, then he would take him down. It went on and on like this for some time. Steve spent the rest of the night pacing, pacing, pacing the campground. The next morning his Guide packed Steve's things and took down his tent for him. He then led him down to base camp and arranged for a helicpoter lift out. Then, the Guide climbed all the way back up to camp 2 that same day and rejoined his much relieved group.
Carry to High Camp. You can't keep a sick man down.
Ty and I woke at camp 2 to another stellar weather day. As I ate my oatmeal/chicken soup Ty thought out loud. "We've already skipped two rest days, but the weather says GO," he said, then asking "how do you feel?"
"I feel good. Ten hours of sleep. I'm rested. I'd rather carry a load than hang around camp all day. You?"
"Same," Ty said. We both knew there may be a price to pay for skipping rest days, but high camp was only four hours above us and we were anxious to check it out. If we got tired we could cache our loads next to the trail wherever we were and head back to camp 2. If the carry wore us out and we wake up tomorrow beat, we'll take a rest day then. It made sense. Enough sense, anyway.
As a two man team, our typical pace is brisk. A few hours into the carry we passed two teams that had left camp 2 an hour before us. As we began the high reaching traverse toward White Rocks and camp 3 (High Camp), Ty and I ducked inside a cluster of boulders to eat lunch sheltered from the winds. A lone climber passed on his way up the trail. He was staggering and I noticed his waist belt was not clipped. Looking back at Ty, I said "I don't like it." I could tell he had seen the same thing I had. From our place behind the boulders we heard the man place five more measured steps, then came the sound of a body landing hard on the broken shale trail.
We jumped up and ran to where the Climber lay in a semi-fetal position, his pack still attached. He responded when we rolled him over, smiling and giving us a thumbs up. Though his color was good, he seemed disoriented and giddy, completed Narked. I demanded that he drink from my water bottle while Ty and I tried to figure out where this man's team was. There were teams 500 feet below and above us. The Climber seemed to think they were both his team. While it seemed likely he was right in at least one case, the distance he had been allowed to separate by was unforgivable. "I'm getting truly pissed off," Ty commented, appalled that any team would allow a marginal Climber to go it alone at 19,000 feet. "This Guy's day is done," Ty pronounced. "I would dope him up with Dexamethasone if I had it with me, but it's back at base," I said. Then we noticed a Climber ascending away from the group beneath us. He was moving extremely slowly. We waited.
As the man approached it became clear that the afflicted Climber knew him. Though neither man spoke English, they communicated their thanks and waved us on to continue our climb. Satisfied that the second man would take the sick Climber down, we did so.
Arriving at High Camp, we cached our loads in a good level campsite and surveyed the circumstances we would soon call home. High Camp, also named Colera Camp on the maps, probably got it's name for all the reasons one might guess. Sanitation is non-existent, which would not be as big an issue if it weren't for the fact that all water must be generated by gathering and melting snow. Gather carefully. We immediately noted a scarcity of snow.
The plateau that forms High Camp is large enough for perhaps twenty campsites. It falls off sharply on three sides with breathtaking views looking down on all of the Andes. In an area noted for electrical storms, this anvil formation is an easy target for lightening strikes. The idea would be to get in, summit, and get out. At 19,400 feet a person's health degrades day by day. There is no recovery from fatigue. Wounds do not heal.
As we descended toward camp 2 Ty and I were shocked to pass the sick Climber and his companion a few hundred feet below High Camp. In spite of everything they continued up! That was the last we saw of either of them. I don't know what became of these Climbers. I hope they descended.
Move to Camp 2. I don't remember Mitch being this funny.
This was to be a rest day, but the weather was excellent and both Ty and I felt well rested from yesterday's carry. We decided to move to camp 2.
There is a game I play whenever we move camp. It starts with a conviction that the preceding carry was more than half the weight, and thus the move will be easier. This inevitably proves incorrect. As I stand swaying beneath a load that would humble the Grinch I then point out to myself that this will be a one way trip. As well, the overnight acclimation will make moving up there easier than it was during the carry. This all makes perfect sense, of course. It just never turns out to be the case.
I was stopping to breath hard every five minutes or so as we closed in on camp 2. My water was gone. The once magical vistas around me were but visual white noise. I was a drooling lumbering beast incapable of higher thought, a troglodyte in a North Face catalog.
The AAI Group appeared briefly to drop a carry and head back down to camp 1. I waved to them from across the glacier as we built our camp.
Ty boiled up a pot of water for our dinner entrees while I pump filtered four liters of drinking water from a hole the IMG Guides had carved in the glacier with ice axes. We had hot mugs of Lipton Chicken Soup, followed by Teriyaki Turkey for Ty and Chicken with mashed potatoes for me. I forgot to bring a bowl along for the climb, so I have been forced to use my thermal mug for oatmeal and cocoa in the mornings, soup in the evening, whatever else in between. It bothered me at first, but now I have learned to block out the ancillary tastes and just focus on "the big flavor" before me.
By 7:30 we are relaxing in the tent. I hand Ty a headphone from my I-pod and together we listen to an album of standup routines by comedian Mitch Hedberg. At 18,000 feet Mitch Hedberg is especially funny. I make a mental note to listen to the album again at high camp.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Carry to camp 2, and "Did I say that out loud?"
I suffered broken sleep the night before with constant bouts of Chain Stokes breathing. This a common phenomenon among people who ascend into high altitude. Basically it amounts to your body breathing at the same sleep cadence it has always. But with less air in high altitude you accumulate an oxygen deficit. When the carbon dioxide in your blood builds to a critical level you go into a gasping mode which is often complicated by a sense of claustrophobia. It is not a health risk in and of itself, but a tight sleeping bag inside a tiny tent is the last place you want to be. Your tent partner is also awakened by this episode and, as a consequence, Ty had less than ideal sleep as well. I thought about starting myself on a course of Diamox, which is a drug that aids in acclimatization and also diminishes the occurrence of Chain Stokes breathing. But there are downsides to Diamox. Frequent urination makes the all too critical hydration a challenge. In addition, some people suffer severe upset stomach. Lastly, a tingling of the extremities is a common side effect, which can be more distracting than the Chain Stokes. I decided to give it another day and see how things go. I have never taken Diamox.
We considered canceling the planned carry to camp 2, but tired as I was, I was sick of camp 1 and needed to feel we were laying the groundwork for a better place, a place that hopefully would offer some kind of drop toilet in lieu of the "go where you like and put a rock on it when you are done" strategy that has turned camp 1 into the kind of place where each loose stone is viewed with suspicion. So much so that many Guided groups hand out rubber gloves before making camp here. I should mention that the park service does offer one official option; a large thin gauge plastic bag not unlike what you might carry goods home from Macys in (with no disrespect to Macys). We are advised to accumulate our waste in this bag and pack it along with us over the mountain. Climbers have voted clearly their disapproval.
Camp 2 will be less crowded, as other routes will have dispersed the crowd of dung landscapers far and wide. It will also offer a higher vista and a sense we are making progress.
As we got underway I felt better. The rugged surface of the moon landscape was interesting and provided dramatic contrast to the snow capped peaks around us. The trail was steep and steady in a way that was familiar to my Cedar Lakes training trail back home. We made excellent time and pulled into camp 2 still feeling strong.
Camp 2 is labeled Guanicos Camp on the maps (named for a alpaca-like creature that lives in these mountains) though most of the Guides call it Helicopter Camp for the remaining chunks of metal that caution against the notion of trying to land a chopper at 18,000 feet. Though camp 2 also has no drop toilet, the fewer numbers of climbers alone make it cleaner. As well, they have conscientiously isolated their leavings in an area on the other side of the glacial moraine.
In the course of climbing to Guanicos camp we traversed to the sunny side of Aconcagua. By late in the day that heat would turn the icy tail of the glacier we camped next to into a myriad of cool clean streams from which we could pump filter a plentiful supply of water.
Ty and I threw down our loads in a nice campsite and stretched out on the rocky soil for a short nap. Soon a large Guided group arrived and set up camp next to us. It was the International Mountain Guides (IMG) Group.
We had first met the IMG Group while checking in at the Penitentes Hotel before the day before starting the trek in. There is always a lot excitement among climbers before things get underway, and a bit of measuring up too. They asked what company we were with. We said we were self-guided. They asked what else we had climbed. I told them "Denali, Kili, Elbrus, and some other stuff." "Sounds like you are Seven Summiters," someone shot back. I knew Ty wouldn't care for that characterization so I said "Well Ty here isn't, but I might be. Not sure. But I guess that's the list I'm working off of." "Well don't save Everest for last," someone else counseled. They were a group of about 7 Climbers, with 2 IMG Guides and one local Guide. Typical of Guided Groups, their ages and backgrounds surveyed a broad landscape of life paths which had all led to this moment of union. The IMG members were friendly and engaged with one another in the fashion of the best climbing teams.
But, aside from short greetings, I didn't speak much with the IMG group as they set up camp that day. This was my initial visit to the 18,000 feet elevation and I was experiencing the "out of body" feeling that typifies my own acclimation process. Part of this feeling is an inability to differentiate between a thought and something I have actually said. If I think it was only a thought and I go ahead and say the sentence I run the risk that it wasn't a thought, that I in fact already said the sentence, and people become concerned by my verbal loop. As a consequence I choose to say very little when first acclimating, even to Ty.
We cached our load in duffels and headed back down to camp 1. A helicopter dashed in for a late-day extraction from base as the first flakes of the evening snow storm began to fall. We waved greetings to the AAI group, hanging out for a scheduled rest day at camp 1.
I felt good as we boiled water for our freeze dried dinner entrees. We had taken a load to camp 2. It was possible to summit from camp 2, though we had no intention of doing so ...but was possible, and that made this thing real. I kept thinking "Now we are dangerous. Now we are definitely in the hunt." My spirits were so high that I burst into my Up With People character when Ty said something about his Terriyaki Turkey entree. "Talkin' 'bout (clap clap)Teriyaki Turkey! It chews like old beef jerky! You got to really work-y! People like it still. The Chinese never will. Ty can't get his fill. I'd rather take a pill. Talkin' 'bout (clap clap) Teriyaki Turkey!"
Monday, February 1, 2010
Move to Camp 1. The return of Karma.
There was much talk of strategy during our rest day yesterday. Most of the talk was being done by the members of the AAI team. Having gotten a good look at the considerable work involved in the carry from base to camp 1, a keen interest had emerged for the notion of hiring Porters.
Some mountains are known for their facilitation of Porters or Sherpas in the carrying of cargo uphill for the Climbers. On Kilimanjaro, for instance, you can not get a climbing permit without agreeing to hire so many Porters for every Climber and Guide. It is a means of employment for the local people. When we climbed Kili two years ago we were a team of 5, with a supporting Porter crew of 19! We looked like an invasion force moving the hill. It was embarrassing.
The Himalayas use Sherpas. Most of Europe uses Porters. But there are a few peaks which stand out in part because such aid is simply not an option. If you are going to summit these mountains you will have to carry all of your own junk. Foremost among them is Denali, high summit for North America, at 20,320 feet. It is in part because of this that many Guides actually rank Denali as being a more difficult summit than Everest.
When it comes to Aconcagua it is still assumed that one carried all their gear, even though Porters are becoming more prevalent. I suspect this will change with time until Acon becomes like Kili ...which would be too bad. Something in the personal test, the demands, and the rewards will be lost, In any case, it still takes a monumental effort to get to this summit at 22,700 feet and respect is owed those who achieve it whether they carried or not. But in fairness to those who don't use Porters in climbing Aconcagua perhaps there should be an asterisk next to those who do, like Mark McGuire's batting stats during the steroid years. That is assuming anyone else cares. But in the deeply personal world of mountain climbing the only stats that truly count are within the Climber, earned in solitary struggle, unavailable for public review or scrutiny.
In the end the AAI group hired 3 Porters, each of the 5 Climbers lightening his load accordingly
As Ty and I pulled into camp 1 the wind picked up and the temperaturedropped sharply. Having noted a weather pattern of heat in the afternoon and snow in the evening, we wasted no time building our tent and gathering water. By the time the storm hit we were well sheltered. About an hour later we heard Kevin, Assistant Guide to the AAI group, shouting to us. We called back and soon his head poked into our tent. He explained that their satellite phone had been broken since day one and was wondering if he might borrow ours to call in a post. He thought the families of the Climbers in his group would be worried by now. AS this seemed little to ask and our groups had helped each other out a number of times, we granted the wish. When Kevin returned the phone he was appreciative. I told him we had done it for the Climbers and their families, but would not be able to offer it again. I told Kevin the story of how the owner of AAI Dunham Gooding , had refused to show me any measure of flexibility regarding the $500 deposit I had made for a trip (see blog entry This Time For Real)I subsequently had to cancel. "In a sense, " I told Kevin, "this is karma earned by Dunham and I hope you get a chance to explain that to him." Kevin said he understood.
I felt an altitude headache coming on so I drank a liter of Gatorade and took an Advil. The wind buffeted our tent hard as the temperature dropped. Ty and I retreated to the comfort of our sleeping bags and a much needed night of rest.
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